


We're Holding on and Letting Go

by galfridian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, three times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4582653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/pseuds/galfridian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Sharon Carter saves Sam Wilson's life and two times he saves hers (depending on who you ask).</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Holding on and Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andibeth82](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/gifts).



Feral screams echo off the mountains. More monster than man now, the former Air Force general crouches low, poised to strike. Once, Jacob Sloane was a respected, by-the-book man; now, he's torn more than twenty people apart.

From above, Sam watches, anchored by his dread. A gunshot shatters the tension. Sloane growls, a sound like thunder, and uncoils. Dirt and debris fan out around him, thrown into the air by the shockwave Sloane generates.

Torn from the sky, Sam tumbles to the ground. Jacqueline Falsworth hits the earth a heartbeat before he does.

He comes to minutes later, just in time to hear Sloane scream again and the last of the gunfire fade. An eerie quiet settles over the valley. His vision blurs, his head pounds. Some of the debris has landed on his wings, pinning him to the ground. It's early still—early morning and early spring—and cold enough to tell him that the warmth he feels in his side is pooling blood.

Pressing his hands to his wound, he glances at Jacqueline. "Falsworth," he whispers, but she doesn't stir. He thinks he sees the rise and fall of her chest. He hopes it isn't wishful thinking. There's a scrape near her collarbone, but the bleeding has already slowed. "Hold on, okay, Jacqueline? Just hold on." He strains to hear her breathing, and all he can think is that Riley will never forgive himself if she dies here because he had the flu.

Behind the mountains, the sun has begun to rise. He welcomes it as much as he dreads it—they won't survive the cold without the sun, but they're vulnerable if Sloane still lives. Fog rolls into the valley, its tendrils curling around him like death's fingers. His own hands tremble, slipping away from the gash in his side.

Behind them, he hears a low growl, a predator with wounded prey in its sights, drawing that last drop of fear before it pounces.

A gunshot echoes, shredding the quiet, and Sam turns his head toward the sound. The shooter fires again, and again, and again. For a moment, all he sees is the spark of the gunfire, and then she steps out of the fog: blonde hair, S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform like armor, her gun an extension of her body. She fires another shot.

Satisfied the monster is down, she kneels between Sam and Jacqueline. She draws a knife from her boot and cuts a strip from Jacqueline's shirt and covers the laceration. The agent turns her attention to Sam, frowning at his wound.

"Agent 13 requesting medevac. I have agents and Air Force down."

He wants to speak, wants to thank her. He may not know much about S.H.I.E.L.D., but he knows any agent codenamed a number isn't expected to rescue soldiers. But his tongue is like lead. "What's your name?" she asks

"Wilson," he manages to rasp. The agent cuts the kneepad from his right pant leg. She unbuckles his belt, sticks the kneepad under, and pulls the belt tight.

"Okay, Wilson," she says. His wound tended, for now, she begins freeing him from his wings. "You've lost a lot of blood, but you'll live."

Sam tries to turn his head toward Sloane. "What—what was that?"

The agent ignores him, pulling the bandage tight. "Probably a concussion, too, so I need you to stay with me here. Eyes open."

"What," he tries again, but he loses the words as his body slips into shock, wracked with shivers. He thinks he hears a helicopter approaching.

The agent settles in beside him. Distantly, he notices that she keeps glancing at Jacqueline, but she stays at his side, a small warmth against the cold. It's then he notices the tears in her uniform, the cuts, and the angry bruises already rising up. As they wait, Sam realizes Sloane's transformation must have been the Air Force's work, and though her team was probably better equipped to handle whatever happened to him, they probably didn't know much more than Sam and Jacqueline did.

Her team. He sees it then: she clenches her jaw, but her teeth chatter; her injuries are superficial, but her uniform is covered in blood. "Your team—how many?"

"Too many," she says.

Magnified by the mountains, the helicopter's roar grows deafening. As a medic comes to take the agent's place, Sam glimpses her superior pulling her away. Nearby, he hears the Air Force scientists squaring off with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s. The agent disappears.

 

"Listen, don't worry about us, Falsworth—Sammy has a guardian angel," Riley jokes before each mission.

 

A year after, Jacqueline convinces Sam to let her drink him under the table—"in Riley's honor." He's sentimental, remembering the Riley he met in freshman orientation, who only wanted to protect others.

Jacqueline pushes a shot into his hand. "I miss the jokes. God, they were _terrible_ , but I miss them."

She throws back the shot, and Sam glimpses the scar on her collarbone, her souvenir from the day in the mountains. "We never talked about that," he nods toward her scar.

"No reason," she says. The bartender slides two more shots toward them. "No one to blame for it but the people who treated Sloane like a lab rat."

"Ever think about that agent?" Sam asks. "We were lucky, right? Wouldn't have left those mountains if she hadn't been there."

Jacqueline stares daggers at the bar, grip tight on the shot glass. "Carter," she says. "Her name is Carter."

"—what? How do you know that?"

"It wasn't luck. She took that mission because of me."

 _"You?"_ He thinks back, remembers the agent kneeling at Jacqueline's side. Nothing to suggest they knew each other.

"You know who I am, Sam. Don't pretend you don't." She's right—everyone knows she's James Falsworth's granddaughter. Jacqueline has served for years, but the recruits still whisper.

"Your grandfather was a Howling Commando, yeah. But wait, Carter? Is she—"

"Peggy Carter's grandniece. Spent more time with Peggy than she spent with her parents." Jacqueline shrugs. "Can't explain it. We all just… take care of each other."

She talk about her grandfather or the Commandos often, so Sam says, "She doesn't know about the whole… _guardian angel_ … thing?"

Jacqueline grins. "She said you shouldn't make a habit of it."

 

After that night, Sam decides to disappear. He wanders for a while, tries to walk away from the image of Riley's broken body hitting the ground. But he doesn't have a memory that doesn't have Riley in it, from high school through boot camp and into service, and the longer he lingers somewhere, the faster the memories come.

Come winter, he rents a cabin in northwest Alaska, relishing the unsympathetic cold, the fight to survive. There's a bar not far from his cabin, one of those places where drinking is the priority, and socializing is an unfortunate byproduct.

Some nights, Sam slips into a secluded corner, his back pressed to the wall and his eyes searching for a fight. But as the months pass, he forgets to look, and for the first time, he finds comfort without Riley's death haunting him. He lingers, even as the air begins to warm and life blooms around him.

One night, he returns to his cabin to find three men laid out on his floor, and Agent Carter sitting at his table. "What the hell, Carter? Are they _dead_?"

If she's surprised he knows her name, it doesn't show. "Hmm," she hums. Nodding toward a man collapsed by the refrigerator, she says, "Maybe that one."

"Okay, again: what the hell, Carter?"

"Check that one's pockets," she orders, indicating the man by the staircase.

The path to the staircase is littered with broken furniture. There's a deposit he's not getting back. But Carter is right, of course. Sam finds a burner phone: a photo of him, the name of the bar he frequents, his address. "Any idea who they are?" Carter asks.

"None," he admits.

"Well, you pissed someone off."

"Retaliatory probably. Took out a few unsavory targets before I retired. These guys don't look like much though." Carter smiles, as if to to say, _they weren't_. "So you're following me now?"

Carter laughs—genuinely laughs, as though clandestine government agencies aren't known for stalking. "No, of course not. If you were my mission, you would've had to solve the mystery of the half-priced assassins without me. They mustered enough professionalism to stay off your radar tonight, but I noticed."

"You were in the bar tonight." It's less a question and more a realization of how off his game he's been. Carter shrugs. "So you're… "

"Multitasking," she says, as though saving his life while covering her mission is like talking on the phone while sweeping. He wonders if S.H.I.E.L.D. teaches that nonchalance… and what it would take to get Agent 13 to drop it. "I assume you don't need help with the… clean up?"

This time, Sam laughs. "Your mess, Carter."

"Your assassins, Wilson." She stands, and her air of professionalism almost masks the wince.

"Hey, now." He tosses the burner phone aside and steps in to steady her. "Let's see it."

With no shortage of reluctance, she unzips her jacket. Blood soaks through her sweater. One of the assassins managed to stab her—probably the one who ended up dead, Sam guesses—and of course, she put her jacket on to hide the injury from him. "It's fine," she grinds out. "I have supplies back at—"

"Couch," Sam orders. "Lay down." To her credit, Carter shoves past him and eases herself onto the couch. He grabs his first aid kit and a bottle of whisky from the kitchen.

Her face remains impassive as he cleans and stitches her wound, although she does take a hearty swig of whisky.

"Listen, I want to say thanks. And not just for tonight."

Carter doesn't meet his eye. "Don't. I did my job."

"No, you didn't. Your job was Sloane. Rescuing soldiers isn't in your job description." Carter takes another generous swig. "So it's a hobby, then?"

Carter's laugh is humorless, an imitation. "S.H.I.E.L.D. and I don't always agree what my job entails. It isn't really the agency my aunt built." Sam covers her wound with a bandage, and she sits up, adjusting her shirt. "Is getting rescued by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents your hobby?"

"Trying it out, I guess." This earns a smile. "So this mission—if I ask, will I get some garbage 'classified' line?"

Carter hesitates, but then, "Something isn't right. This isn't a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission. It's your standard mercs-with-bombs, at least on paper. I don't know why I'm here, but that's the priority: the bomb."

"Need a partner?"

"I doubt you're ready for a life of espionage, Wilson. Just concentrate on keeping yourself alive."

He grins. "Okay, then. How about a ride?"

She accepts.

 

Searching for Bucky Barnes is two-parts guessing an amnesiac assassin's next move and one-part putting down the Hydra operatives also pursuing the amnesias assassin. Two months in, Sam loses count of how many of Hydra's people he's left unconscious and handcuffed. Agent Carter was right: he wasn't trained for espionage. But has was taught to hone his senses and trust his intuition.

It makes chasing a target who's also an ever-shifting puzzle only marginally less frustrating, but it _has_ kept him alive. Still, it's inevitable that there'd be one to get the drop on them. Hydra did poach some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best agents. Sam recognizes this one from Romanoff's shortlist of traitor scum, a Level 6 agent almost almost as good as her.

He's also more smug—an impressive feat, he'll tell Romanoff later—and far more careless. He's gone full-on villain monologue, swinging Steve's shield around like a madman, when a bullet pierces his brain stem. Carter steps out of the shadows, and if Sam has harbored any lingering idea of her as any kind of 'angel', it dies with her smirk. "Wilson," she greets.

"Carter."

Steve, in a rare moment of stupification, gapes. When he recovers, he says, "Carter? Your name is Carter?"

She crosses to them, pausing only to pull Steve's shield from the dead man's limp grasp. "It is. Of course, you'd probably know that if you'd called like Natasha said."

"Wait—" _Called?_ "You're the nurse?"

"She was never a nurse," Steve interjects.

"I've had some medical training," she protests. "Still letting S.H.I.E.L.D. agents rescue you, Wilson?"

"Still rescuing soldiers, Carter?"

She grins, and with her eyes lingering in uniform, it's equal parts joyful and predatory. "I'm here for the same reason you are."

"So the CIA sent _you_ to fetch him?" Steve asks. So much for sidestepping the awkward history then. Sam forgets how uprooted Steve sometimes feels; and now, he's has to reconcile the nurse who wasn't a nurse with Peggy Carter's grandniece and Sam's rescuer.

"Better me than someone else," Carter counters, shoving the shield at Steve.

"That right?"

"Yeah, it is. Just like it was when I asked Fury to assign _me_ to the apartment next to yours."

Sam thinks back to Jaqueline in that bar, talking about how the Howling Commandos and Peggy had a bond that's reverberated through two generations. He wonders if he's misunderstood her as much as Steve has—somewhere beneath her conviction and resiliency, Carter needs Steve to understand her.

"Cater—" Sam says, stepping between them.

"Go home. See her again, before it's too late," she tells Steve. "My team will be here soon to clean up. You two need to be gone."

For the first time, Sam walks away from her.

 

Turns out, Ultron left behind a few parting gifts. Whatever phase two of his plan was—or perhaps plan B—he didn't leave much to chance. Six weeks after Sokovia, a swarm of his robots descend on San Francisco, for no discernable reason than chaos. A month later, two companies of mini-Ultrons try their hand at infiltrating Stark Tower. They even hear rumors of Ultron's minions terrorizing Hydra.

Fortunately, Stark manages to salvage a few. He isn't able to locate the rest or find out what their mission is, but when they activate, he's able to figure out where they're going.

The fifth wave of robots wakes in late August, and a few minutes later, Stark sends out the location: a "covert"—Sam can hear the air quotes in Stark's voice—CIA facility in New York.

"Steve," Sam says. "Carter. Jacqueline says they moved her there."

"Go," Steve orders.

When Sam and Vision arrive, the bots are crawling all over the building. "An excellent opportunity to repay a debt," Vision observes.

They fight their way into the parking garage, Ultron's robots as eager for a real fight as they are to tear humanity to pieces. They find a cluster of them by a door that leads to the indoor levels, half of them smashing their way through the wall. "Unimaginative," Vision comments, relieving one of the robots of its head. "Ultron would be disappointed."

Inside, they find Carter at the center of a horde of robots. What appears to be a transistor radio sits at her feet. It emits a faint hum that seems to create an invisible wall around her. Those closest to her are sluggish, more like zombies than murder bots.

When she sees Sam and Vision, she sighs. "Really, Wilson?"

"We're here to… help?"

"Better luck next time," she says, then stomps on a button on the device. The robot horde crumbles at her feet. "We're the Central _Intelligence_ Agency, remember?"

Sam sighs. "Well, we took out the ones on the roof."

"This thing has a three hundred yard range. Maybe you should just buy me dinner."

 

Later, he meets up with Jacqueline. She laughs at his story until she's gasping for breath. "Peggy Carter started training Sharon when she was thirteen. You don't stand a chance."

"We'll see," Sam says.

 

Three months later, Sharon opens the door to find Sam sitting at her table, five mercs strewn across her floor and one tied to a chair. "About time," Sam says. "It's been hours."

"What the hell, Wilson?"

Sam nudges the merc. "Tell her why you're here." He tosses a dossier to Sharon. She flips through its pages, pausing only to roll her eyes at the merc.

The merc snarls. "Hydra sends its regards."

"Manners," Sam admonishes, resting his feet on the merc's badly mangled ankle. "Now, tell her why you're tied up while your friends are unconscious."

"Because I promised that I would scatter your remains across the city," the merc jeers, "and I will."

"Thought you might like to talk to this one," Sam says.

 

 

"This doesn't count," Sharon says, watching the clean-up crew pull up her ruined carpet.

"Sure it does, Carter, if we're counting Alaska."

"… fine," she relents. "That's one."

"Don't worry, I'll catch up. You're reckless."

"Yeah, well, you're an Avenger. You're bound to do something stupid."

Sam considers. "I'll take those odds." One of the CIA's clean-up guys sighs helplessly as he cleans around them. "This will probably take a while. Dinner?"

"Fine, but I'm buying."

 

 

The next time she saves his life, the Avengers are at war. "Four-one," she reminds him.

"I'll catch up," he promises, pulling her for a kiss.

Over the comms, there's laughter. "Weirdest mating ritual ever," Clint says.


End file.
